This one had just the things I find lacking in the usual boring ASD "megaprods": coherence, design and style. Great work. The nice music would've been even better without those cheesy trance-leadsounds though :)

the insects, bugs and ants look really fantastic. but the strange floating patterns on all the objects remind me of some old turkish carpet and have no visual appeal - very irritating.
absolutely not my cup of demo. :(

If anyone is further interested in the "man figures" appearing in the demo, check the works of the greek painter Yiannis Gaitis, it was a nice reference, but maybe difficult for the non greek ppl to understand.

for the first time, i can completely embrace an ASD demo. this is stylish, slick and - most important of all - coherent! not a potpourri like lifeforce, but one slick concept piece with much love for detail and a consistent colorscheme. okay, i might convert to an asd fan now, if this keeps on like that! :)

To all people having problems running this with ATI Radeon cards using the latest cataclyst display drivers: Switch back to 7.5 (yeah one year old drivers...). That did the trick for me - including lifeforce.

I really, really like this. It's the best sequel to beyond the wall of eryx I've never wished! And it's graphical design feels so *real* while being surrealist. Much more so than the photorealistic 3d stuff we too often see groups striving for.

it follows the metamorphosis of the organic fly at the begining (the one being eaten by the ants) through a world that is progressively becoming more and more 'industrial', so to say. At the end the fly becomes an industrial version of its former self too - and that is what the metamorphosis is about. The change.

The Kafka reference is there, yes. The men can run, but they cannot escape the big 'monster' which is this world, from the depths of the earth to the stars of the skies (Just like his hero K. funny enough my first name starts with K so there you are :-)).
The man holding the balloons symbolise hope against the odds, but the scissors are fast to act.

Anyway, graphics wise I guess I was influenced a bit by the game "Caverns of Kafka" and "Drelbs". Check them out on C64 ! That explains the "70's wallpaper" feel. It was intentional.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for voting, my faith in the demoscene is getting stronger and stronger ! I had a hell of a time at BP, see you all somewhere soon.

ok I need to fix this. If you have a problem with the ATI can you please send me an email at pataridis at yahoo.com to arrange some sort of betatesting. Your help will make our demos more solid in the future !

This isn't revolutionary, but it doesn't need to be. It looks awesome, and now that Navis mentioned the "Caverns of Kafka" link I can at least bed the nagging feeling I had about "now where did I see these graphics before".

I'm assuming we can add the general "Cosmi" logo / "Aztec Challenge" gfx to the inspiration as well? :)

Navis was apparently brave enough to sacrifice a couple of votes to make people think outside of the box. Imo the real challenge was to make a 2D demo so easy to connect to for most people and ASD did a marvellous job with that. The result is not cheesy at all, so it's something that I totally like to watch.

very nice demo, and its great that this outside the box thinking was spread wide at this years breakpoint.. i found bits of it a little long winded but the awesome fly or whatever at the end was really cool. mmm zepplins + bowler hats :)

I already gave you my thumb, but after watching this on my big rig in 1600x1200 I'll promise you my next cdc! Those patterns (yes, I remember playing Drelbs on my 64 back in those days) are beyond cool.

i adore everything about it. This just came in 'favorite of all time' on my "demo meter" and i belive it will take another 15 before another demo will leave me equally impressed with the thing as a whole. The last one was arte btw.

Wonderful demo. I really like the way the PC scene vibrates at the moment. This demo got it all - really stylish graphical shapes, good and consistent expression, nice stencil textures instead of using flat or shaded ordinary colors on the objects. Keep on!

I liked the graphics style in this demo. It is both beautiful and fresh. The music is kind of passive, yet it serves the demo's atmosphere well. I felt it is rather short, which is unusual for an ASD demo.

I watched Metamorphosis (older machines version) on Wine, which is the closest I have to Windows(tm) atm.

Finally, pouet failed me when I originally typed this comment by forgetting my cookies, logging me out and eating my post. I typed it a second time using a text editor. jsyk.

I guess calling it "Systematic Chaos" would have been too obvious. :P
Aside from the HIGHLY IRRITATING(!) high pitch sound you hear in the beginning (whenever the scene twitches) it's very, VERY cool!
I really liked it a lot (didn't really expect much else from ASD ;))!

Agilo, that's a 10kHz feedback loop sound. I included some more disturbing sounds in the track, like the rumbling sound at the end caused by the fly's wings. I thought it would sound really scary on the big party speakers.. but it didn't work out as intended.

As for "Systematic Chaos".. it never occured to me, but heh.. I can see the vibes now that you mention it =)

Caught between piggy and rulez. I'll land on piggy because I know you can do so much better with the colors. The bugs were great btw. (And i mean the bugs you can see on the screen, not the bug that failed run the demo).

Certainly something different from ASD's usual style, visually at least the flow is still there though. I love ASD's stuff but this just didn't do much for me, will give it a piggy though as it may grow on me life Lifeforce did. Iconoclast is still my fave though :)

very cool to watch. I specially like those ant animations (sometimes it even looks so real!). As said before, ASD's serious attention to detail and experimentation efforts deserve a thumb up, if not more.

THough I added this prod. myself to pouet (sorry for extra H in the name :)
I just got to look at it for the first time since the stream..

Extremely nice ideas in the design and graphics.. Music contains some sound-fx to match whats going on great to!
But somehow I dont think a 2nd place was justified looking on the competitorsfield of the PC demo compo.. And why this prod. was played last ? There were better prods to play last in the compo..

In anyway, looking on all BIG and less BIG demos ASD have released over the years this demo deserves the attention. It seems ASD never runs out of some nice ideas :)

Perhaps its time to introduce a life-time archieemnt award bu the scene.org awards staff.. I nominate ASD :)

While I really like that you can always come up with something new and experimental, I have to say that this didn't really appeal to me, mainly from the visual aspect. The colors and patterns are quite close to something I would call ugly, but I realise there are many who like this stlye.
The insects and animations were great though, and the music as well.

Very arty and polished. But as a demo, I kept waiting for something to happen and it never did. Interesting to watch, but needed something to push it over the top. The music was too understated, too (fitting, perhaps, but that's not really a good thing). Thumbs up, but I think 2nd at BP 08 was very generous.

I love it! One demo in one shot. It reminds me of those czech animations on tv when I was little.

The small people walking across the bridge in the screenshot gave a great sense of scale (no shit.. it is the schoolbook way to get a sense of scale I guess).

I imagine it is a bit like progress which comes back to nature. A bit like tapping into the brain of a $4 beetle and use its vision for sensors instead of building a $60000 sensor by traditional technological means maybe.. hmm.. ehh :) Maybe not.. (there are some guys doing this already though. Reverse Cyborg?)

quite like the Masagin idea was turned around here, I like its cold and gloomy ways. . . bringing on the old demoscene feel, conjuring up some Kafka's prose (as the ST title suggests, by the way). neato!

After Lifeforce I was expecting much much much much much much much much more. I don't really like the mixture of the b/w graphics with the rest. Couldn't force myself yet to watch it again but since I remember it being fresh in a way, thumb up.

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked."

not much of an effect-show, of course, but the scene were the transformed fly appears in the end is powerful, I guess the music plays a part here, and is comparable to the silent part of your "walls of.. "-demo.

Finally saw it, great stuff. Not groundbreakingly awesome, but original and pleasant to watch (and listen to). I would not go as far as calling it revolutionary, but that's some style for sure. Shows that a demo doesn't need any 3D!

A bit disapointed when it was shown, mostly because those dull colors are SOOOO not like the usual ASD stuff. Oh, wait : there's no such thing as "the usual" with ASD, that's what I like about you guys ! :)

Like Navis once said in a certain article: "Your audience should never know what to expect from you next."

Once you again, you achieved exactly that, Navis. To me it's a mystery how you manage to break out of your own borders over and over again. Truly inspiring in every possible way. Please keep pushing for new grounds, Navis.

Instant love, without a doubt.
A bit better than Beyond the walls of Eryx and I just loooourve' the little people that appear here and there throughout the entire demo, especially the dude sitting on the edge while thinking heavily about something.
Should have won BP08.
A classic, IMHO!

There's a lot of beauty in Metamorphosis, but also a lot of unrealized potential. A big issue for me is that it lacks the drama implied by the soundtrack. Everything is just presented "as-is", which if course is fine, and I feel very much intentional to have the camera just be sort of an objective narrator. But then again everything feels too calculated for that too, so the direction side ends up falling into the awkward pit between something highly choreographed and for lack of a better term "Cinéma-vérité".

I also don't care for the soundtrack. Like mentioned already it does provide the necessary drama and communicates well along with the theme and narrative, but the production is just paltry. More strictly electronic oriented music never seems to work out in ASD demos. Cheap supersaw and other plain sounds, no intonation, no modulation, tinny awkward percussion, everything mixed in the most vanilla way possible.

That's my problems with the demo, the rest is brilliant. The graphical style is impeccably characteristic and consistent. The colors are beautiful and absolutely brilliantly reflect the bleak realm depicted and the metaphorical narrative surrounding it. I love how it all centers around just three elements... insects (intricate and well animated), static more or less abstract depictions of people and everyday objects, and various abstract 2D shapes tying everything together. And oh gosh all the patterns stenciled over them, so pretty... I love how there's a lot of care put into all of this that isn't even immediately obvious to the viewer but it takes a lot of effort to pull all of it off so transparently. The only thing I'm left hoping for perhaps is to use layers and depth more to your advantage; it all feels a bit flat (yeah it's 2D har har, you get my point).

The end is terrifying and still tends to give me shivers especially if it's been a while since I've last seen this.

This was very welcome breath of fresh air 10 years ago, and certainly stands the test of time technically a lot better than almost all demos from back then. Like tempest said this isn't even close to being expired, unlike "3d overkills" (what a wonderful term, gonna nick that into my vocabulary). At this point I notice I actually have commented on it years ago, and while I know what I meant back then (see first two paragraphs), I have to be real and give recognition to the merits this has.

Hey thank you for this. If I have 20 mins to show to a newbie "our demos", I always choose first a big 3d (fairly modern like Monolith) and then these two, as I am -generally speaking- very happy about how they turned out.